


Zia

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon her is... canon her, Canon-Typical Mind Control, College AU, College AU Lucrezia is a sweetheart, Dimension Travel, F/M, Gen, Horror, Listen just expect Lucrezia to be herself and you're good on warnings honestly, Mind Control, Possession, Pregnancy, Sexual Harassment, it's both
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20984414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: It was just a story her boyfriend wrote, where she got to play the villain and he got to play the hero, and she could convince him to draw her chest nice and give her science fiction wasps and monsters and all those fun things. It was just a story.And then if really, really wasn't.





	Zia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for GG event week, prompt:  
Oct. 10: Original characters
> 
> Is she... technically an original character? Maybe? Kind of? Close enough to count, at any rate.

The Dreen had plans upon plans, timeline after timeline. Their cold fingers plucked at distant threads of fate and fantasy, drawing the future into the past and holding the course steady for those that would shake themselves apart. They injected reality into the streams that would drift into nothingness, and fantasy into the rigid rods of destiny that choked themselves to a standstill by holding too solidly to what _should_ be instead of what _could._

They did their duties, but they didn’t always do them in the ways expected. They’d set up a program, Gifting guides to the timelines they deemed at most risk, and when they’d seen the effects they could get with it, once they’d fiddled and tweaked and torn their metaphorical hair out to fix the messes they’d accidentally taken from butterfly to hurricane, they began to experiment. A timeline pulled from the core, isolated to prevent a catastrophic collapse from cascading across realities to destroy hundreds of worlds instead of just one. A Gift. Two. Rinse and repeat. Mourn the destruction. Again. A positive response, good enough to risk adding to a core timeline, shaking it towards stability. A paradox so wide it ripped the universe to shreds.

Again.

Do it again.

Find something new.

Change something different.

Try something you’d never consider.

Find a new Lucrezia.

o.o.o.o.o

_Breathe._

She was—where was—

“Quickly, Tarvek, _quickly_, we’ve been given a _Gift,_ here, and she’s perfect, just _look at her.”_

“Father, are you—_Father_, are you sure it’s not a trap? Perhaps I should fetch Anevka, she might have a better idea of—”

“There’s no time! Oh, but _look_ at her, my boy, she’s a picture of the Lady! The Dreen must wish for her to return as dearly as I do, to give us her.”

Her head was spinning and spinning and she felt like she was going to throw up and oh _hell,_ not again, not again, not—

“Get her in there, hurry. Let’s get rid of—piercings? Odd for Lucrezia, but—oh, never mind, just get rid of anything that might get in the way.”

“There’s not very _much_, Father. Her hair is only pulled back, not adorned.”

“There might yet be—ah! Silver in her teeth, filling rot-holes. That shouldn’t be a problem, not when she’s so perfect otherwise—”

“Father, I _really _don’t think this is a good idea. She looks like the Lady, but we don’t even know if she’s a _Spark._ This could kill her, and then you’d have wasted an otherwise perfect host.”

“No, it’ll work, I can _feel_ it!”

_They were talking about her, could—something about how they could kill her, something about—about—_

“Nngh—where am I? Who—”

“Now!”

_Pain._

o.o.o.o.o

_Zia looked up from her textbooks and over at the bed that her boyfriend and his brother had taken up. They were bent over several notebooks, pointing at something and arguing in hushed tones._

_“You do realize you have an exam _literally_ tomorrow, right? It’s in less than twelve hours.”_

_“But we can’t decide how to include Auntie Gkika,” Barry explained._

_“Cool. Decide it tomorrow. After your exams,” Zia told him._

_“I don’t have an exam tomorrow morning,” Barry tried._

_“I already know it all,” Bill said_

_“Barry has one tomorrow afternoon, and you know that’s not going to fly with me. You had your break, now start studying,” Zia ordered, tapping a pencil against her own notebook and leveling a look with one hard-won eyebrow raise in his direction._

_“Okay, but, consider this,” Bill said. “What if I write more instead?”_

_“If you do that, I’m breaking up with you,” Zia told him. “I’m not going to be with a guy that doesn’t take his education seriously.”_

_Bill squinted at her. “You know how we were going to make you a really cool femme fatale in the comic?”_

_“Yes, I do.”_

_“I changed my mind, you’re going to be the main villain.”_

_“Let me keep my rack and I won’t care,” Zia said. “Villain me up. But do it _after_ your exams.”_

_“Ugh,” Bill groaned, falling back on his bed. “You’re such a slave driver!”_

_“That’s adorable. Study. You’re the one who told me not to let you get distracted anyway, _darling.”

_He stuck his tongue out at her, and she rolled her eyes. He’d get over it._

o.o.o.o.o

Consciousness returned to her like an icy bucket of water. She stumbled where she stood, catching herself on a nearby wall and then falling to her knees anyway. Bare knees. Carpeted floor. What…?

“My Lady?”

She looked up and flinched away. “Aaron? I—what the hell, where—what is going _on?”_

Aaron froze, staring at her, and then carefully said, “My Lady, I… rather think you’ve mistaken me for my father. Again. Are you sure you’re quite alright?”

There was something odd about his words, something that made her feel like what she heard and what she understood were two different things, but she just curled in herself and clutched at her stomach. Oh god, pounding headache _and_ her stomach turning over on itself, and she wasn’t even allowed to take any painkillers.

“My Lady?” The young man who looks just like her ex but claims to be his _son_ said. “Perhaps you should lie down, you’ve been up for much longer than we expected, and those stimulants you took are probably wearing off by n—”

_“Stimulants?!”_ Zia shrieked. “You gave me—what the _hell?”_

The young man backed away, hands up and eyes wide. “Er… you are _not_ the Other, then, I take it?”

She stomped up to him and put a finger in his face, her stomach twisting in glee as he pressed himself against the wall just like every guy she’d ever scared off of a friend because he hadn’t been willing to recognize a soft no for what it was.

“Tell. Me. What. Is. Going. On.”

He stared at her, and then said. “You’re the original owner of the body, aren’t you?”

“Origi—_yes_ I’m the original owner, who the hell _else_ would I be?”

“Lucrezia Mongfish.”

“Wh—yes, that’s _my name,_ what—”

“The Lucrezia Mongfish of _this_ world, who’s been presumed dead for some twenty years now,” he interrupted, looking a fair bit more nervous than he probably should have, for someone who could probably deadlift her if she took a closer look at his torso. “Fifteen, if you’re part of the right circles. She was born… nearly sixty years ago, now. And you’re… early twenties?”

“…I’m twenty-four,” Zia said faintly.

The young man who was apparently not her ex-boyfriend looked nervously at her. “Are you alright?”

“Do I _fucking_ look like I’m okay?” She snapped at him. Her stomach turned. “What did you _give me?”_

“A… actually, if you’re already so upset, I think it may be best to refrain from telling you the details,” he said. “Er… we thought you were a Dreen Gift, but—”

“Shut up,” Zia said. “I’m—whatever the fuck is going on, do _not_ give me any more stimulants. Or depressants. Or, like, anything medical that isn’t absolutely necessary for me to survive.”

“Is there a specific reason?”

“My medical situation is _my business,” _Zia hissed. She spied a window and marched over to it. “Not yours. I’m guessing you’re already behind a lot of shit here, not—where the _hell_ am I?”

“Sturmhalten,” he said. “You… my lady—”

“Please stop calling me that.”

“You—very well. What shall I call you?”

“Zia,” she said. “That’s what—what everyone else calls me.”

“Okay,” the man said. “I’m, well, I’m named after my father, but everyone refers to me by my middle name. Call me Tarvek.”

Zia nodded slowly. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the town outside the window. She couldn’t be in the States anymore, there just weren’t any _castles_ like this there, she was _sure _of it. Probably. In any case, there weren’t any close enough for her to have gotten there easily; she must have been drugged or something, maybe—

“My L—Zia?”

“What?” She asked, not quite able to be scared of how hollow her own voice sounded.

“Do you know what—what the Dreen are?”

She dredged up loose memories. “They were… background characters in a comic Bill and his brother were writing. Ominous minor time gods, basically? They looked like Dementors but had motives that were way less clear.”

“I don’t know what a Dementor is,” Tarvek told her. “But yes, minor time gods would likely be accurate. They’re… they’re real, here. And sometimes, they bring people in from another universe, where this entire world is nothing but a story, for reasons that haven’t always been explained. We know they’re trying to guide history, but not how, and with you… and how you showed up… I have no idea. I can’t say I ever imagined them being on the Other’s side, but…”

Zia wanted to answer him.

She really did.

But her mouth wasn’t working. Her thoughts were clouding. She couldn’t—

“Why, _Tarvek,_ darling, were you interrogating my host? You’re such a sweet young thing, trying to explain to someone just why and how they’re doomed, but oh, we really _do_ need to burn that romantic streak out of you. Come on now, we’ve got _lots_ to do!”

Zia wasn’t in control.

She was aware, though.

A helpless passenger in her own body, unnoticed and unminded by the woman who’d decided Zia’s body was Hers.

o.o.o.o.o

‘Aaronev’ was dead. Murdered by his own daughter, who—well, actually, Zia was pretty sure she’d _met_ the version in her own universe. Anna Storm, not even toddling yet. The Aaron she’d known had been a doting father, if absentminded and not very _good_ at parenting, but she’d congratulated him and his young wife when they’d told her. She’d gone to the baby shower and everything.

Princess Anevka Sturmvoraus was not an infant, and Zia’s stomach turned when she pieced together what, exactly, had been done to the woman who was a year or two older than Zia herself.

It had been her idea.

It was her fault.

o.o.o.o.o

_“What if—hear me out—what if evil story you is like. Trying to come back from the dead so she can take over the world?” Barry asked._

_“I can dig it,” Zia said._

_“Necromancy’s a bit too magic for this,” Bill mused. “It’s more soft science, so… reanimation? Frankenstein style?”_

_“She’s the Big Bad, right?” Zia tossed her two cents in. “So make it, like, _really_ depraved.”_

_“How evil do you want story you to be?” Bill asked. “I won’t make her any more evil than that, promise.”_

_“Just _really_ go all out,” Zia said. “Like, you know that John Mulaney bit? ‘My wife is a bitch’ and all that? Just go ham. Make it awful. Make it so story me is like… copying her brain into younger bodies?”_

_“Oooh, clones?” Barry asked._

_“How about pretty young girls with Potential,” Zia suggested. “Just really make it awful. And maybe it doesn’t work every time, so there’s all this wasted, useless deaths that didn’t even serve a purpose.”_

_“Zia, that’s _awful.”

_“I’m so glad this is a comic,” Barry mused. “Imagine if we were filming this. The special effects would be so much effort.”_

_Zia threw popcorn at him. “You’re going to be complaining about all the details you have to ink in like two days and you know it.”_

_“Okay, _rude.”

_“Don’t care, sweetheart.”_

_He stuck his tongue out at her. “You’re lucky Bill loves you. If he wasn’t wrapped around your finger, you wouldn’t be getting redeeming features.”_

_“Ew, why are you making me redeemable? Make her suck! I will accept a tragic backstory but _no _redemption, you hear me?” Zia demanded._

_“Why are you like this?” Bill complained, wrapping his arms around Zia’s midsection and leaning back into the couch so she was laying against his chest. “Couldn’t you just be happy with a normal villain?”_

_“No, if you’re going to make me evil, then you’re going to make me every evil sorceress and mad-with-power CEO I’ve played on stage. If I’m not putting Mother Gothel to shame, then what’s the point?”_

_“Ugh,” Barry groaned. “Theater kids.”_

_“I will fight you, Barry. Don’t try me.”_

o.o.o.o.o

Tarvek kept his—well, he hadn’t actually _promised_ not to give the Lady Lucrezia any more stimulants, but he’d explained that her host had reacted poorly to it and suggested that there was a significant danger to it. Lucrezia had pouted and whined but eventually sighed and relented. The host had had the body for longer, after all. She’d know about any, ugh, _preexisting conditions._

“Not such a perfect host after all, is she?” the Lady asked, examining a hand that she’d stretched out before her and held up to the light. “You know, I haven’t even felt a _hint_ of a spark from her? Can’t fugue! It’s infuriating.”

“But you’re here,” Tarvek tried to console her. “It’s certainly more than we’d expected, my Lady, and you can’t say it hasn’t worked out in its own way. You’ve even fixed the Throne!”

“I _have,”_ Lucrezia preened. “It was in such awful shape, don’t you know? Utterly dreadful. I’m surprised it worked at all.”

“You’ve mentioned, my Lady,” Tarvek said, keeping his jaw loose and friendly and definitely not grinding his teeth in rage. “Perhaps it will be time to move out soon?”

“Oh, hardly,” Lucrezia dismissed. “I’m quite comfortable here, you know. Have you seen your sister? She’s been avoiding me, and I _was_ so hoping to have a look at that pretty little chassis of hers…”

“No, I’m afraid she’s gone to visit the Selnikovs,” Tarvek said. He couldn’t blame Anevka for it. He’d barely convinced her that trying to kill Lucrezia wouldn’t be worth it. Dreen Gifts were nearly immortal, and given the army of Geisterdamen that they had no way of dealing with unless they called in the Baron (and oh, _that_ certainly wasn’t happening), there would be consequences they couldn’t handle even if they _did_ somehow succeed. There was no fault to be found with Anevka staying as far from the woman that had haunted their childhoods as she could.

“A pity,” Lucrezia sighed. She leaned back on the couch, stretching and twisting and settling in place. “I’m going to nap. _Do_ take a good look, darling, it makes me feel all kinds of nice things.”

Tarvek may have thrown up in his mouth a little.

Lucrezia smirked at him and then closed her eyes and sighed.

He waited, tense as anything and leafing through the nearest book without quite seeing. He waited for her breathing to slow, for her restless shifting to end, for—

_Gasp._

_Rustle._

_“Kill me.”_

Tarvek’s head snapped up.

Lucrezia was sitting again, eyes wide and crazed and panicked. She was breathing in sharp pants, fingers digging deep into the fabric of the couch.

“Zia?” he asked, just a shade too careful.

“Kill me,” she repeated. “This—this _me,_ she’s evil and you know it and you _need to kill me now.”_

Tarvek winced. “I understand, but I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Zia demanded, voice pitching high and frantic. “What do you mean, _cant?”_

Tarvek hesitated, and then came closer. He pulled a knife, unpoisoned and clean, from the pouch at his hip. “If I may have your hand for a moment?”

Zia eyed him dubiously, but her breath was coming a little more evenly now. She held it out, and flinched as he brought the knife down through her wrist.

It went clean through, leaving her completely unharmed. Her arm shook in a quantum state from the elbow down, and she whimpered, snatching her arm back.

“I _can’t,”_ Tarvek repeated. “As far as we know, nobody _can._ It’s all we can do to keep Lucrezia in Sturmhalten, instead of spreading abroad. We physically _cannot_ kill her, or you.”

Zia let out a broken little moan and put her face in her hands.

Tarvek didn’t know what to do.

“Nothing is more important than stopping her,” Zia said, lifting her head. Her tear-streaked face made was like a knife to the gut. “Not my life, not yours, _nothing_ is more important than stopping her.”

“I—I understand,” Tarvek said.

He didn’t want to give up his life to stop Lucrezia, but… well, ultimately, leaving her alive wasn’t really the best idea.

\--

When Tarvek got word that the circus was in town, weeks after Lucrezia had returned to life and the Baron had already swept through the town to investigate Aaronev’s death, he resigned himself to the fact that Lucrezia insisted on dressing up in a disguise and going as his date. He was well aware that she knew of his discomfort, and seemed to take some great enjoyment in it.

When the girl playing Lucrezia spoke, Tarvek’s stomach dropped out through the bottom of his chest.

_No, no, no, not another one, not another Lucrezia with the _voice_, not—_

_I need Anevka._

“Oh my,” Lucrezia laughed lightly. “Let’s invite her to dinner, shall we?”

“Of course, my lady,” he said, voice hollow. There was no way to reject the command; if he did, she’d simply order every revenant in hearing to do it anyway, and maybe kill him in the process. Or stuff him so full of Rappaccini’s draught that he couldn’t think beyond whatever depraved thing Lucrezia asked of him.

He got word ahead to Anevka, if barely. Smoke Knights were useful, especially when Lucrezia wasn’t aware enough to notice them, and didn’t have her spark to help her out.

_The Holy Child has the voice. She is here. Destroy everything. Hail Mary._

The plan if anything and everything went wrong, so much so that they couldn’t hope to save it, so much so that they had no chance of surviving or thriving in any situation, so much so that Tarvek couldn’t even _pretend_ to have Europa’s best interests in mind anymore.

The plan if they gave up on everything short of just staying alive.

The plan to call the Baron, and fuck the consequences.

\--

_“Oh my god,” Zia whispered. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god, I can’t—”_

_“Zia?” Arella called through the door. “Are you done yet?”_

_“I’m fine!” Zia yelled back, and then swore to herself as she realized that was precisely the wrong thing to say._

_“…I’m coming in,” Arella declared, and Zia closed her eyes, waiting. The door creaked open, and padded footsteps entered the bathroom of their shared apartment. “Are you okay? Why are you on the—oh no.”_

_Zia nodded miserably._

_“Oh, honey, no…” Arella said, getting on her knees and wrapping her arms around Zia. “What are you going to do?”_

_“I don’t _know,”_ Zia wailed. She wrapped her hand tighter around the test. “I was _careful. _We were using protection and—and I can’t believe it’s happening again!”_

_“Are you going to keep it?” Arella asked. “I mean, I know you couldn’t last time, but…”_

_“I’m not ready to be a mom,” Zia said, burying her face in Arella’s shoulder. “I need—I need to talk to Bill, don’t I?”_

_“Probably for the best, if you’re thinking of keeping it at all,” Arella said._

_“Maybe… adoption?” Zia said. “I mean—I could skip the bars and parties, cut out caffeine, all that. Not too hard, right?”_

_“There’s a lot more to being pregnant, and you know it.”_

_Zia shuddered. “Yeah, I know, but… I’m torn. I think I’m good to go through a pregnancy, but I’m not ready to raise a kid. I’m barely more than a kid myself!”_

_“Talk to Bill,” Arella reminded her. “If you’re even considering it, he deserves to know.”_

_Zia bit her lip and looked down. “I’m… I know that, um, Lilith and Adam? They can’t have kids, but they’ve been looking to adopt, and it would mean I could still be involved, kind of, but not as the mom, and—”_

_“Talk to your boyfriend,” Arella said again, a little more forcefully, this time. “If you pick abortion, he doesn’t need to know. If you break up with him and raise it on your own or adopt out, he doesn’t need to know. But if you’re going through with the pregnancy and staying with him, he _does_ deserve to know. Doesn’t have to be right this second, doesn’t even have to be this week, but you have to talk to him.”_

_“Right,” Zia said, breathing in shakily. “I’ll—I’ll do that.”_

_“Atta girl.”_

\--

They fed the girl truth serum.

Zia’s heart couldn’t pound in terror and rage, because it wasn’t her body right now. She could see herself in the face across from her, could see Bill and even a hint of Teodora in the jaw, something that had skipped a generation. There was a cowlick that looked more like Zia’s own mother, and that had shown itself in Serpentina, but—

But this girl was her own person, and Zia wanted to _scream_ because this girl, this _child,_ was her _daughter._

The fetus growing in her belly could have become the girl in front of her. Would have, maybe, if Anevka’s own parallel to Anna was—

Zia would have felt nauseous, except this wasn’t her body.

And that wasn’t her daughter.

Except it was, it was, it _was_ and they were _taking her to the throne_ and <strike>where was Anna where had the metal girl gone she could help she _should_ help and</strike> the guards were Geisterdamen and Tarvek looked panicked and oh god oh god oh god oh—

Zia fell back, clutching at her head and screaming.

“Get her _out of here!”_

The Geisterdamen listened, of course.

How could they not?

\--

_“Okay but, like,” Zia licked some peanut butter off a spoon. “Is it tied to her person, or to something else?”_

_“How we talking?”_

_“Well, you said you wanted her to do, like, body-hopping, right?” Zia gestured wildly with her spoon. “And—”_

_“No, _you_ wanted her to do body-hopping,” Barry said._

_“Hush, the adults are talking,” Zia said, and dodged the pillow he threw at her head. “Anyway! If it’s tied to her, like, body chemistry or whatever… or her DNA?”_

_“Oh, she’d lose it, definitely,” Bill agreed. “We were thinking of tying it to her voice. She can bring it if she’s hopping to a robot body? And then tell her revenants to obey the copies that don’t have the voice.”_

_“Sweet,” Zia said. “Pass me the oreos?”_

_“That’s a metric fuckton of sugar,” Bill said._

_“Fuck off,” Zia told him. “I’m pregnant.”_

_“Yes ma’am,” he said, grinning and passing the package over. “Hey, one question, Miss Entomology Minor.”_

_“If you want me to provide you with bugs for your uncles’ weird recipes again, no.”_

_“Listen, Khrizhan has _talent_ with those, okay?” Bill said. “But nah, I just wanted to ask what your favorite bug would be to go around making the mind control slaves.”_

_Zia tapped her chin, and ate an orea. “Well, you know I’m a sucker for apoidea…”_

_“Which means?” Barry prompted._

_“Bees and wasps, mostly,” Zia said. “Let’s go with wasps. They’re way more menacing.”_

_“We’ve got you,” Bill promised. “Want a bee costume?”_

_“No, just _really_ show off my tits,” Zia said. “Like, _boom_, there they are, y’know?”_

_“What is it with you and your tits?” Barry asked._

_She threw the pillow back at him. “They’re great tits, Barry.”_

\--

Zia was in a cell when the Baron came, the door guarded by a green-haired woman and several Jägers that had tracked <strike>her daughter</strike> the Heterodyne Girl to the castle, a carefully-unwasped Smoke Knight, and the royal children themselves.

She was quiet, until the door opened.

She looked up and smiled, unable to stop her lips from stretching or her eyes from crinkling or her head from dipping in a way that had her looking up through her lashes.

She couldn’t stop _anything._

“Why Klaus, darling, you’re looking better than ever! Do you still have all those lovely scars? Do you have _more? _You should really come and… show me.”

He stared down his nose at her in disgust.

Lucrezia grinned back.


End file.
